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Cautionary Tales For Children
Wonderful witty poems great for reading to your children. The stories and rhymes will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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Research has shown how important YOU are to your children and how as a dad the things you do, and keep on doing, really count, whether you live with them, or you are a single dad and are only able see them once a month, once a week or more, what you do really matters. This site is dedicated to all dads but will be of special relevance to the single dad. Remember, you are half the reason your children exist and they need you whether you live with them or not. As their dad, you have what it takes to make their lives successful and fulfilling no matter how often you see them. This site is about all the positive things that we as parents have to offer our children.
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Wizard's Wands
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Make your own beautiful wizard’s wand
One of the first shops that Harry Potter visited when Hagrid took him to Diagon Alley was Ollivanders, the wand shop to buy his most important possession, his wand. Wands can be made from a variety of materials, after all Hagrid used an old umbrella as a wand! Yours will be made from paper.  But do not be deceived it will be every bit as magical as the real wands used in the film, and if you make it carefully will look just as good.
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Because glue is used on the paper to harden it, this wand is a made of a type of papier mache. You can paint your want in any colour you want, and the instructions show you how to make you wand look distressed (that is a technical term that furniture makers use to describe the process of artificially aging an item), and really ancient; fit for Harry Potter himself.
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The wand painting is built up in three layers. When painting the wand make sure you use paints that dry to be water proof, otherwise the next layer you put on will wipe off the previous layer. Paints you can use are acrylic, decorating emulsion (latex paint, US) and or spray paint.
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To create the gold highlights on the detailing you can use a gold felt pen, gold gel pen, gold nail varnish (if you’re careful) or if you want the exact gold effect shown in the photos, then you should use a special gold rubbing paste (I used a product called Gold Finger from Daler Rowney), which frame makers use to make picture frame look golden. But any thick gold paint will do and you can put it on with your finger, if you’re careful. For the really special silver metallic effect I used silver-leaf, you could also use gold-leaf. This isn’t expensive, and is not at all necessary, but it is nice to try it if you have the chance. (if you are going to use gold or silver leaf, then ask in the art shop or look on the web for instructions on how to apply it. It’s not hard, but you will need a small pot of gold size (an artists liquid glue that dries tacky).
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If you don’t have any of this stuff, then you can still make a lovely wand following the instructions, as you can see from the images below and even more in the wonderful wand images in the Your Models section. People have used great inventiveness to create their wands, they have used bits of wood or bark to trim then, used string or even cooked spaghetti instead of the glue gun patterning, and all manner of different types of paint and finishes to make their wands unique.
For a detailed set of instructions and an explanation of how to do the distressing, which is very easy and great fun, please see the instruction sheet which is available in both A4 and US Letter sizes. Just click on the size you want to download.
 
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Wizardry and Magic
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Harry Potter is all done. Of course there are rumours of an eighth book and the fact that we still have two films to go (as the last film will be split into two). It's going to be a long summer, but November will come round soon enough and the bitter sweet joy of seeing another HP film will be tempered by the fact that there is definitely only one more after that. Nevertheless, while you wait, there’s always more than enough magic in the air for you to recreate events at Hogwarts, the Burrow or the Ministry of Magic, by making your own models of Hogwarts wizarding paraphernalia.
Homemade wizard’s wands, Golden Snitches, or beautiful writing quills and loads of other Potteresk things are all here, ready for you to download on dadcando.
 Even if you’re just a muggle and have had enough of Harry Potter, there are plenty of other magical fantasy stories to keep you interested in the Magical Art of Making. All the Chronicles of Narnia are all being turned into films, as are the stories of Lyra in the books of His Dark Materials trilogy. Whenever we see interesting things in these films and stories, we will bring you them as best magical fantasy craft projects, so that you can turn your hand to making magic, and conjuring up some really cool stuff to amaze your friends.
 Now you can make your very own Victorian Domed glass display case, from a 2 litre soda bottle, to display all your favourite projects and artifacts really beautifully. With our simple instructions, the results of just an afternoon's making will be really cool, good enough to be film props in fact, and better than anything you can buy, because you made it yourself.
Or why not make a beautiful writing quill from either a hippogryph, phoenix or snowy owl feather . And because no quill would be complete without its own ink pot, there are also some easy to follow instructions and printables, for making the most fantastical, magical Ink-pots.
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